9-year-old dies imitating suicide scene seen on social media in Palwal: Cops

The child was playing with his brother when he slipped from a bucket; probe underway into parents’ phone history to confirm source of the video.

A nine-year-old boy died in a freak accident after he was accidentally strangled while attempting to recreate a suicide scene he had likely seen on social media, police said on Monday.

Police said the boy accidentally strangled himself while copying an online reel; his elder brother was present but failed to realise what had happened. (Getty Images)

The incident took place on Saturday night inside the family’s residence in Gailpur, Palwal, when the child was playing with his 11-year-old elder brother, police said. 

“The children may have come across a reel on social media showing a hanging scene, which they tried to imitate while playing with their parents’ mobile phone.Both parents were away at work at the time of the incident, police said,”  said Sanjay Kadian, public relations officer of Palwal police. 

Police said the brothers had tied their mother’s scarf to the iron grill of a window and placed an inverted bucket below it to climb up. “The younger boy had climbed on the bucket and had put his head inside the scarf, which was virtually a noose, as its one end had a knot. The boy probably lost balance and slipped from the bucket, which got him hanged,” Kadian said.

Investigators said the elder brother, though present, did not grasp what had happened and therefore failed to raise an alarm. The incident is believed to have taken place in the evening and was discovered when the parents returned home several hours later to find their son unconscious and hanging. They alerted neighbours and rushed him to the Palwal civil hospital, about 10 minutes away, where doctors declared him dead on arrival. 

Police said a forensic team visited the spot and that nothing suspicious surfaced in the preliminary probe. They are also going through parents’ phone and social media history to ascertain the incident’s cause. A post-mortem report is awaited. The child’s father told police that the death was accidental, after which no FIR was registered. An inquiry under Section 194 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita was conducted at the Sadar Palwal police station on Sunday. The body was handed over to the family after autopsy.